


An Ounce of Pain

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, F/F, M/M, One Shot, Potterlock, Suicide, Teenlock, but only for one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-04 21:59:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1086146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three prompts I received on tumblr for three different pairings. All of them are one-shots. Enjoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ragdoll

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is snipers-dream.tumblr.com. i always welcome prompts and beta requests.

Everyone has his darkness. Whether it’s small spaces, horrid screams, or looks of disappointment, everyone has something that makes them want to curl up in a ball and shut out the world. Or write bad poetry and cry their eyes out. Or kidnap their boyfriend and boyfriend’s attractive flat-mate and hold him at gunpoint.

For James Moriarty, it was serenading his boyfriend from the ground outside his window, only to watch him turn around and yell “Sherlock!” into the darkened flat.

It was setting the Admiralty Arch on fire, clearing the place out, and planning to take John on a date there, only to receive a frantic text message ten minutes after he was supposed to show, reading, “Running around with SH. Don’t wait up. xxx”

It was John Watson telling him that he felt like a ragdoll being fought over between two small children.

It only took for months of being subjected to all the above to make Jim Moriarty finally snap.

“ _Ragdoll?!”_  he raged, his voice jumping up an octave. It was enough to make Sherlock, still bound to a chair and gagged, examine him with interest.

“ _You’re_ the one that wants to spend more time with your gorgeous-fantastic-best-friend-flat-mate than with me!”

 John was seated in a plush leather chair next to Sherlock, his arms bound behind his back. He was free to speak, but he couldn’t bring himself to look Jim in the eye.

“Jim, you don’t want to do this.” His voice was a stern whisper, a sobering tidal wave. Jim’s finger twitched on the trigger, dangerously close to a full-blown squeeze.

“There are two options,” Jim alleged, his voice simmering down. “Either I can shoot him,” he motioned the muzzle towards Sherlock, “or you both walk away, drive happily into the sunset, and never spare me a second thought.” Either way, he knew this meeting with John would be his last. He had already made his decision; it was time for John to make his.

John, slipping his hands free of the rope fairly easily, raised his palms up high and crossed the room, walking towards Jim.

“Put the gun down.”

“No!” Jim shouted, looking like a child throwing a temper tantrum. “I’m angry, and the only way to fix this is to shoot somebody. Preferably Sherlock.” Reaching the man, John covered both of Jim’s hands with his own, wiggling the gun free.

“Jim, do you really think I could just forget about you?” He looked at the man with a sadness in his eyes.

Jim shrugged. “Everyone forgets everyone, if you give them long enough.” John shook his head and pressed a kiss to Jim’s lips. He straightened up, his thoughts rushing towards more pressing matters.

“Honey, I know how tempting it is to shoot Sherlock, but you’re not going to shoot anyone.”

Jim looked down dejectedly.

“Fine. I’m not going to shoot anybody.”

John pressed a kiss to Jim’s temple.

“Alright. Now how about I promise to spend more time with you, you promise to not kidnap or kill the world’s only consulting detective, and we both go home to have copious amounts of sex?” Jim shook his head up and down.

“Can we pick up ice cream on the way home?” he asked, looking up at John with wide eyes.

“Of course.” He wrapped his arm around Jim and started towards the door.

“But what about Sherlock?” Jim growled, nibbling at John’s ear.

“Leave him,” John whispered back, “he set my favorite jumped on fire this morning.”

James Moriarty realized that, no matter how many lifetimes passed, he would never forget John Watson.


	2. Despite the Cold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt was: potterlock irene/molly

“Irene, we’re going to get in trouble,” Molly hissed, covering her mouth. Regardless, she allowed herself to be dragged down the corridor by the old er girl, hidden only by nocturnal atmosphere. She had expected this year to be ordinary – filled with studying, quidditch practice, and the occasional shift in the nursing ward. Like every other year. And she would have enjoyed it, as she did every other year.

“That’s what I’m counting on, darling,” Irene whispered back, pressing a kiss to her temple and urging her along. And at that moment, Molly Hooper realized that she would have missed Irene Adler, if they’d never met. They left the magnificent stone building that was Hogwarts, neither girl taking the time to stop and realize just how beautiful it was in the moonlight, without the hustle and bustle of students trying to get to class. Molly tightened her hold on Irene’s hand when she saw where the girl was taking her.

“But that’s the – “

“Yes, the Forbidden Forest. I know, darling. Now please,  _hurry.”_

When Molly woke up to a mess of dark curls pressed against her nose and a silk night slip rubbing against her skin, she didn’t ask Irene how she got to password to the Hufflepuff commons.

When She found a vial of Felix’s Elixir tucked inside her underwear drawer the morning of her game against Gryffindor, she didn’t ask who it was from.

And when her dorm prefect decided to let her keep her rabbit, Toby, in her room, even though they both knew it was against regulations, she knew better than to ask what changed his mind.

Which is why when Irene Adler dragged her out of bed and en route to the most dangerous place in Hogwarts at two in the morning, she sure as hell wasn’t going to ask any questions.

Molly was jerked out of her thoughts when she almost crashed into the girl, not realizing Irene had stopped.

“Irene – “

“There.” Molly followed Irene’s gaze, past the thicket, hidden behind the cloak of night, and her heart melted.

There, nibbling on shrubbery, it’s main radiating an eerie light, was a unicorn.

Molly’s breath caught in her throat.

The animal looked up, and she saw straight into its eyes, black as coal. She was overwhelmed with a feeling of familiarity.

As quickly as it had appeared, the animal ran off into the forest.

The world stopped for a moment, allowing both girls to catch their breaths.

“That was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen,” Molly whispered, shattering the silence. She felt a sender arm wrap around her waist.

“’One of’?” Irene reiterated, a purr in Molly’s ear. “What could have topped a unicorn?” Molly looked down at her shoes, a furious blush creeping across her cheeks.

Irene laughed.

“Ah, I see.” She reached over, placing a hand on the girl’s chin and turning it so they were eye-to-eye.

She leaned in, just barely brushing her lips against Molly’s before digging in, placing both hands on the girl waist. Despite the cold, despite the danger, Molly leaned into the kiss. Because she had the most beautiful thing she’d ever laid eyes on in her grasp, wrapped around her, and she had no intention of letting her go.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a prompt along the lines of "John is Moriarty the entire time and Jim's just a stand-in". Sadly, this is the end. It is also where the warnings come into play.

He took the great Sherlock Holmes’ best friend and turned him inside out, putting his wretched innards on display and obliterating him from existence. He wanted to show Sherlock Holmes that he was truly alone in thus abyss of a universe.

He had given him a taste of love, just barely pressing the goblet to his lips, throwing him a rope, and then he sliced it with a blade sharp enough to reduce the number of digits on a left hand in a single sweep when Sherlock was centimeters away from the top, just as he was sucking in lungful’s of air that wasn’t stained with the musty stench of the chasm from which he crawled.

But John, Jim, whoever the hell he was, sent him tipping backwards, tumbling head over heels and ensuring his swan dive into darkness.

“I had you going there, didn’t I?” John asked, swaying on his heels and breaking out into a feral grin. Sherlock glimpsed a familiar, dark twinkle in his eye, one that he had only seen when staring into a mirror. “Your little  _doctor_ , the best and only friend you ever had.” He took a step closer, his words dripping off his tongue like venom. “He needed you to save him from himself. And you thought you had, didn’t you?” He wore the grin of a child who had just told a particularly inappropriate joke. “I hate to be the one to break it to you, but John Watson never existed. Don’t you see? No one like him could  _ever_  exist.”

“Why?” Sherlock drawled. His usually whirling brain had come to a screeching halt, and it was the only question he could manage.

“Because, Sherly, you needed to be knocked down a peg. Taught a lesson. Given a gentle reminder that you’re all alone, always have been, always will be. But guess what? So is everybody else in this sad little world, they just pretend otherwise so that they can sleep at night, and I knew the perfect man for the job. I single-handedly gave you a heart, and then I ripped it out. It’s just so much  _fun_  messing with your pretty little head.” The words were daggers, slicing Sherlock to ribbons. John flourished on the blood seeping from his wounds.

John circled around to where the dark-haired actor was tied to a desk chair, ignoring the cocked gun lying stiff in Sherlock’s outstretched grasp; he knew the consultant would sooner machete himself in the skull than let any harm come to John Watson.

He worked out the knots, feeing Jim’s hands and pressing a gentle kiss to the top of the man’s head, resting his hands on slim shoulders.

“This is Richard,” he said, “My better-half. Really, I like to think of myself as worse.” Richard – Jim – grinned up at Sherlock, still donning the mas of the timid actor.

_Was it (ever) a mask?_

Charmed,” Sherlock mumbled, trying to steady the tremors in his hand. He was finding it increasingly difficult to breath, as though he had been shoved inside a vacuum with men in lab coats observing him to see if his head would burst like a watermelon.

John grabbed Richard’s wrist, raising it as though he were a ragdoll, and pushed up his right sleeve, glancing at his leather-strapped watch.

“My, look at the time. Sorry to be so rude, but Richard and I must depart. People to ruin and places to be and all that.”

Sherlock knew he had to stop Jim – the man who strapped bombes to civilians, released convicted rapists and murderers, blackmailed him into faking his own fucking death ( _all for what?)_. But he was frozen, immobilized wit – dear? Anger? Frustration? Whatever it was, he was drowning. And John was supposed to be his paddle.

_John wasn’t real. He never had been._

In one fluid motion, he squeezed the trigger, sending a single bullet whizzing through the air. A mist of red erupted from the back of Richard’s head, staining John’s oatmeal jumper a spotted crimson.

Sherlock lowered the gun.

John blinked, staring at the slumped over body and glassy eyed stare that used to be Richard before launching himself at Sherlock.

He wrapped his arms around the lanky frame, burying his face in a mess of dark curls and transforming into a quavering mess.

“Thank god, Sherlock, he forced me to say those _things_  and I knew you’d realize, because you’re brilliant and fantastic and I lov – “

A second bullet was fired.

John grip slackened, his body sliding to the ground to join Richards in a deathly embrace.

With a hand steadier than it had been during the first two shots, Sherlock raised the browning, a final time.

_Baa, baa black skull_

_Have you any lead?_

_Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bullets bled._

_One for the master,_

_One for the dame,_

_And one for the little boy_

_Who cries down the lane._


End file.
